Quotes from Adam Smith

The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

Quatrième maxime. - Tout impôt doit être conçu de manière à ce qu'il fasse sortir des mains du peuple le moins d'argent possible au-delà de ce qui entre dans le Trésor de l'Etat, et en même temps à ce qu'il tienne le moins longtemps possible cet argent hors des mains du peuple avant d'entrer dans ce Trésor.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Cheap years tend to increase the proportion of independent workmen to journeymen and servants of all kinds, and dear years to diminish it.

The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition, that they are going fast backwards.

The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.

that a single independent workman has stock sufficient both to purchase the materials of his work, and to maintain himself till it be completed. He is both master and workman, and enjoys the whole produce of his own labour, or the whole value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed. It includes what are usually two distinct r

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Si abordas cada situación como asunto de vida o muerte, morirás muchas veces (Adam Smith)

whatever part of it remains after paying the rent of the land, and the price of the whole labour employed in raising, manufacturing, and bringing it to market, must necessarily be profit to somebody.

The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.

Suppose that government is founded on contract, and that these powers are entrusted to persons who grossly abuse them, it is evident that resistance is lawful, because the original contract is now broken. But we showed before that government was founded on the principles of utility and authority. We also showed that the principle of authority is more prevalent in a monarchy, and that of utility in a democracy, from their frequent attendance on public meetings and courts of justice.

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations

is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS is one of the most important and influential books ever written. It

Princes and sovereign states have frequently fancied that they had a temporary interest to diminish the quantity of pure metal contained in their coins; but they seldom have fancied that they had any to augment it.

Ninguna sociedad puede ser floreciente y feliz si la mayor parte de sus miembros es pobre y miserable.

The want of parsimony, in time of peace, imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When

Her tedbirli aile baÅŸkan? için baÅŸ kural, evde yap?lmas?, sat?n al?nmas?ndan pahal?ya geleni, hiçbir zaman evde yapmaya kalkmamakt?r.

The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.

It is in this manner that money has become in all civilised nations the universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another.

After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience, that man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported.

But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

El precio real de todas las cosas, lo que cada cosa cuesta realmente a la persona que desea adquirirla, es el esfuezo y la fatiga que su adquisición supone.